The Rule of Three

By
Louie Simmons
 Published by Westside4Athletes®
Made in United States of America.
2018

Copyright © 2018 by Westside Barbell

Cover credit: Tom Barry
Back cover credit: Tom Barry

ISBN-13: 978-0-9973925-3-1

www.westside-barbell.com
Email: customercare@westside-barbell.com

Printed by Action Printing

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 THE AUTHOR

Louie Simmons is the founder of the Columbus Ohio Westside Barbell

Club, established 1986. Louie has several decades of special strength training
experience for many sports. His members have broken over 100 all time
worlds records in powerlifting. He has been a consultant for many collegiate
and professional teams. He is one of only four men to have made elite totals
in five weight classes, top 10 from 1971 to 2005, has authored eight books,
15 DVDs, 250 articles as well as being a current lecturer and holding 11
United States patents.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface: Dreams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Foreword: Identifying Athletic Talent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Chapter 1 Training Boys versus Training Girls . . . . . . . 15
Chapter 2 Genetics and Heredity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .19
Chapter 3 Training for Flexibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Chapter 4 Endurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 27
Chapter 5 Physical Fitness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Chapter 6 Learning Tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Chapter 7 Before Choosing a Sport. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Chapter 8 Selecting a Sport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Chapter 9 Speed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Chapter 10 Reaction Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Chapter 11 Sprinting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Chapter 12 Special Strength Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Chapter 13 Conjugate Training System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Chapter 14 Endurance Training . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Chapter 15 Testing a Child . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Chapter 16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
1- Single leg Hip and Over head raises . . . . . . . .. . . .. . 69
2- Bodyweight Jumping Squats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .70
3- Bodyweight Regular Squats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71
4- Jump Rope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .72
5- Weighted Jumping Squats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .73
6- Front Raises . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74

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 7- Medball Squat and throw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
8- Angled High Knees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
9- Side Raises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77
10- Side Stretches . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
11- Power Jog . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . 79
12- Lunge . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
13- Press Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
14- Single Leg Glute Raise .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . 82
15- Med Bll Sit Up. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . 83
16- Single arm Push Up Row . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . 84
17- Push Up to Plank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
18- Abdominal v sit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
19- Modified push Up . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
20- Single Tuck Jumps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
References and Selected Bibliography .. . . . . . . . . . . 99

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Preface: Dreams
As a young boy, I always had dreams. I guess I could have been called
a dreamer—I always wanted to be something more. I could imagine myself
as a weight lifter or a baseball player. Sometimes I dreamed of growing up to
be rich. I was always dreaming. Perhaps it was because when one starts out
with little you dream of lots of things it would be nice to have or do. Maybe
dreaming was a way to avoid reality when reality was not that pleasant. But
over the years, I have learned the importance of dreaming. I believe you must
dream of something before it can ever become real. At 12 years of age I
dreamed of becoming a strong man and someday having the strongest pow-
er-lifting gym in the world. That dream came true.
Young boys may dream of becoming a Lebron James or Mike Tyson,
or maybe Tom Brady or his coach, Bill Belichick. Young girls may dream of
being Serena Williams or Ronda Rousey, or maybe a Victoria Secrets mod-
el or a race car driver. Every future starts with a thought or dream. In the
spiritual book Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Jonathan dreamed of being the fast-
est gull. After years of trying, he found perfect speed. Perfect speed is being
there. Jonathan’s story changed my life. It enabled me to go from eighth in
the country to number one in four months. The most important lesson for
me is that if one person can accomplish something, so can you or I.
I have had many accomplishments over the years such as receiving
my first patent for the design of the Reverse Hyper© or writing my first of
eight books about strength training. Each of these accomplishments started
with a dream. One has to dream big, and I’m not just talking about the ath-
lete, but the parents and coach must buy into the dream as well.
A dream can be hoping to do something or be someone. It can be a
fantasy at first, but it may come true when thoughts and time coincide. My
dreams come true from mentally seeing myself succeed as the main thought
I have at that moment. I believe it is advisable to allow a child to fantasize
about being what others are not. At 70 years old, I still fantasize about be-
coming better for the athletes I represent. I rely on many things and people
to motivate me to become more enlightened about my surroundings so I can
be better for them than I was the day before. Boys and girls, this should be
your goal as well.

Louie Simmons

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Foreword: Identifying Athletic Talent
Many years before the Soviet sports machine determined that great
sports talent must be identified and nurtured as young as four years old and
then led throughout the sports training cycle, the Soviets had the first sport
scientists. The duty of these scientists was to find young talent and develop
that talent until these athletes became world or Olympic champions. They
did this through identification of special characteristics that were needed for
a particular individual or team sport. Men like Jozef Drabik, PhD, developed
a system to train children to become future champions. In his book Soviet
Training and Recovery Methods, Ben Tabachnik, PhD, explains the system and
the process.
A system of development started at age eight to 10 years old. The
child was graduated every two years until at 19 to 21 yeas old, he was a pol-
ished athlete or he was gone. And during these years, top sports scientists like
Vladimir Issurin, PhD, wrote books like Building the Modern Athlete and Athletic
Talent. Issurin’s work was intended to support the reality of proper selection
of sports talent based on testing the children, but also overseeing their long-
term preparation as well as the possibility of having other family members
that excelled at high levels in sports.
Louie Simmons, the author, found a completely different path to his
lifting career that spanned from 1961 through 2011. His path was a winding
road that came full circle.
His career started at age 12 when he had a dream of becoming a
strong man. He began working as a block laborer mixing mortar, carrying
block and pushing a wheel barrow. This work made it possible to buy his first
110-pound weight set. Because of the strenuous labor he had been doing, he
could clean and jerk 110 pounds at 12 years old. He did not have any guid-
ance from a coach. What he knew came from reading Strength and Health by
Bob Hoffman of York Barbell Fame and Iron Man by Peary Rader, and then
finding his own way.
He was reading one day and told his lifting buddy that he would be in
a magazine some day. His friend said without hesitation that he would never
be in any magazine. Those words provided motivation that Louie says he can
still hear in his mind today.
Around the same time in his life, a family from the city moved out
to the country where he lived and soon talked him into playing Little League

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 Baseball. He had never played before, but found he was gifted and soon was
hitting home runs at almost every game.
It was while playing baseball that a major occurrence happened in the
small village called Valley View. (Ironically, this is where Westside Barbell is
now located.) The field where the team was playing had a home run fence.
This was the first time Louie had played on a field with a fence. When he hit
a home run, he would have to and hear the crowd cheer him on, which was
a totally new experience. That day—at that moment—he knew he could be
special. It changed his life forever.
While he was playing Little League, he continued to do Olympic lift-
ing. His clean and jerk was 260 pounds at 14 years old. This strength helped
his baseball career and with the help of his Pony League coach he played on
a low level farm club at 15 years old. He needed his coach’s help because a
player was supposed to be 17 years old to play on the farm team. But thanks
to the coach—and his strength—he started at right field and batted third
while 15. He played until after high school graduation when he was drafted
into the Army in 1966. Although he had thought about baseball at the high-
est level, he realized that the fact that he was barely 5’6” meant that baseball
was probably not in his future. At that point, he began concentrating solely
on weight training.
Ironically he competed in his first power lifting meet in 1966 one
month before entering the Army. He had never before seen men built like
the competitors. At that point, he was sold on Powerlifting, and it became his
lift-time indulgence. That decision meant more reading; and this time he was
reading about the world-famous Westside Barbell Culver City, California. The
guys at the Culver City gym, Bill West, George Frenn, and Pat Casey, became
his mentors without knowing it.
It was 1969 that marked the new beginning for his lift-time dream
to become a strong man. By 1971 he set a national squat record and started
a journey of 34 years making Top 10 Lifts. He made Top Ten Lifts in all cate-
gories without gear and with gear. He became only one of four men to Total
Elite in five weight categories and for five decades. He has a tattoo on his
neck to signify this, the only one of its kind.
From the beginning he knew it would take mental toughness, ge-
netics, dedication and sacrifice, but this was easy for him because strength
is his soul. But he also always knew his limitations: at 63 years old, injuries
had taken their toll on his body and he stopped lifting competitively. But his

10
soul was still strong and he had 11 patents to his name and had written eight
books as of 2018. Like Culver City before it, Westside Columbus, Ohio, is
the strongest, most recognized, special strength gym on the planet. Louie has
made many acquaintances and has mentored them to become some of the
greatest lifters of all time. But, more important, many of those young men
and women have become gym owners and mentors themselves.
All of these coaches/mentors have to be very knowledgeable in all
competitive sports, but most of all they have to be honest with the child and
always the parents. Anyone can call themselves a coach, but only a few really
qualify.
I have never heard Louie ask to be called a coach. His philosophy
is to teach a child so that someday that child can teach others on their own
quest for greatness. An experienced coach will evaluate the progress of the
child and determine if he or she is ahead of schedule or maybe a year or two
behind the others due to not maturing physically or mentally. However, many
coaches neglect to understand this common problem. The coach may have to
interact with a second coach or possibly a therapist to correct a posture prob-
lem. Unlike the Russians who provided a degree in sports coaching, it can
take years to develop into a top coach. Among his many accomplishments,
Louie and Westside Barbell have provided a certification to understand the
science of sports training. And now he has written this book focused on
coaching children.
Children need to be nurtured early to successfully travel the road to
athletic champion, and I feel confident this book will help athletes, parents
and coaches gain a better understanding of what that journey entails.

Tom Barry

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Introduction

The Rule of Three is a term coaches in the former Soviet Union

used for the general physical preparedness (GPP) training for boys and girls
from seven to 10. To successfully participate in sports today, it is extremely
important for all children in this age group to develop coordination, flexibil-
ity, general strength, endurance, hand and eye coordination and the ability to
perform athletic feats.
In the United States, the training of boys and girls seven to 10 years
old was unheard of for weightlifting. L.S. Duorkin states that prior to the
1930s, the rules permitted that only males who were 20 years old and up
could train and compete. Then, in the 1950s, it was lowered so that 15- to
16-year-olds could compete in the sport of weight lifting.
A. I. Kurachinkov studied junior weight lifters from 14 to 16 years
of age. The study focused on the effects weight lifting had on their physical
development and how physical stress can affect the child. The results of the
study showed only positive contributions to bone density and motor appa-
ratus. For those who participated in the study, weight lifting had a positive
effect on the spine due to a more muscular corset that corrected posture.
A study by B. E. Podskotsky showed weight lifting made it possible
to adapt to progressively heavier loads and increases in cardiovascular fitness.
His study also stressed the importance of GPP.
Studies like this one led to weight lifting training starting at younger
and younger ages. It also allowed the training of “The Pocket Hercules,”
Naim Süleymanoğlu, who would become a Turkish World and Olympic
Champion in weightlifting, to start training at the main training facility in
Kircahli, Bulgaria, in 1977 when he was 10 years old. Naim became the
youngest lifter to make a triple-body-weight clean and jerk at 16 years old.
Because of his phenomenal prowess at the age of 10, a special scientific
study was formed as not to lose young athletes from 11 to 12 years old.
Ramping up the program with younger athletes was a large invest-
ment for the Bulgarian Weightlifting Federation. It amounted to a fifty per-
cent increase in their budget. At first, the Russian Team did not think it was
that important that the Bulgarian’s junior team was starting to defeat their
Russian counterparts, but they soon realized that those junior lifters were

13
 becoming the senior lifters, and then the senior team was beating the Russian
team.
While it is hard to determine who will rise to the top at seven to 10
years old, you can expect the strongest boys and girls will excel due to the
fact that they are stronger than their competition. But it is also most likely
that they will excel at all forms of their training throughout their adult ca-
reers.
The Rule of Three begins with brief discussions about training boys
versus girls and the role of genetics and heredity, but quickly moves on to
address training for flexibility, endurance and physical fitness.
The first skill to consider is jumping ability. Jumping is a basic test of
explosive power. The higher one can jump with body weight, the more ex-
plosive one is. Explosive strength is the ability to rapidly increase force. This
means the steeper the increase of strength in time, the greater the explosive
strength (Tidow, 1990). There are alternative methods to develop all special
strengths for children aged seven to 10 years old. The strength chapter will
show how to build general strength without loading the spine.
Throughout The Rule of Three, three points you’ll see stressed again
and again are 1) the importance of a quality coach in the athlete’s success,
2) the prominent role of an athletic training plan, and 3) the child must be
happy, enthusiastic and not over trained.
Let’s begin.

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 Chapter 1
Training Boys versus Training Girls

The Westside viewpoint on the difference between methods of train-

ing boys versus training girls is that there are simply no differences. Today,
boys and girls compete in the same sports from basketball to track and field
and even combat sports. Except for the obvious differences in the repro-
ductive organs, boys and girls both have the same anatomy including a brain.
Both have to constantly learn new skills. Learning new skills will increase the
number of synaptic connections between brain cells (Black, 1990).
Both boys and girls must be healthy, fit and happy to have a well
balanced lifestyle. No one can excel when they are sick or depressed. Because
both genders compete in the same sports, both must learn to run, jump,
throw and catch and other basic athletic skills at a young age, hopefully by
age four or five. If not learned early, it will be much more difficult or maybe
impossible for them to catch up. Boys and girls over five will find it much
more difficult to gain those movement abilities.
It is known that all boys and girls learn movement skills at the same
rate. This means the children that start at four or five will have a distinct
advantage over the ones that start at seven or older due to being limited to
the same amount of training hours. All skills must be trained, but children
will invariably lack in something. It could be endurance or strength or even
balance. More time must be allocated toward the lacking skill. But what if the
child lacks general strength? What age should they start using weight train-
ing? And is weight training safe? Before we go into several studies by experts,
let’s consider that the general public was doing weight training on its own
without formal training.
The author was part of the “general public” that picked up weight
training. His continuous weight training began when he was 12 years old.
With no formal training or coaching, his clean and jerk, a traditional weight
lifting exercise, was 110 pounds. However, his General Physical Preparedness

15
 (GPP) was vast due to a background of doing manual labor and extensive
playground work. A high GPP makes it possible to excel at all physical activi-
ties.
The Soviet sport scientist Leonid Dvorkin published a study that
dealt with lowering the age for weight lifters to begin training. In 1936 Soviet
rules only permitted adult males who were at least 20 years old to train. By
the 50s, it was lowered to 16 or 17 years of age. Then, 15-year-olds started
to compete by the 1960s. The Bulgarians started lowering the starting age
of their weight lifters and started a trend when their junior team started to
dominate the Soviet team.
The Bulgarians then selected a young man of 10 years old and forev-
er changed the face of weight lifting as well as general weight training. Naim
Suleymanoglu, the Pocket Hercules, became the youngest weight lifter to
clean and jerk triple his body weight.
So, you are most likely wondering what effect weight training has on
young girls and boys. As far back as 1953, A. I. Kurachenkov showed in his
two-year study a very positive effect. His study demonstrated that weight
training did not effect the development of the osteo, motor skills or height.
A similar study on swimmers showed no indistinguishable results. A plus,
however, was that young weight lifters gained bone hypertrophy. Hypertro-
phy is the increase in the volume of an organ or tissue due to the enlarge-
ment of its component cells. The study also showed a positive effect on the
spine by strengthening the torso and having a positive affect on posture.
Many young boys and girls may choose weight or power lifting and The Rule
of Three pertains to specialization in strength sports as well. Other studies
from G. Gurkov and I. Ivanov found training for weight lifting was accept-
able for 12-year-olds.
There were numerous studies on the optimal training loads that
would include GPP. The information from the studies made it possible to
increase the number of Masters of Sport Studies. International classes in-
creased two-fold at the famous Dynamo Club. Medvedyev states the success
for the Soviet weight lifting team was due to its early work on young weight
lifters.
To conclude, if you follow the Westside System for loading, it is per-
fectly safe to start weight training at an early age, provided you have a quali-
fied coach to guide the weight training from the beginning. Strength training
plays a large role in developing the physical qualities of children. The young

16
athlete must rely on gaining strength to increase speed as well as technique,
flexibility, coordination and dexterity. By seven and eight years old, they must
build quick movement. By nine, add general endurance. Note: The strongest
sprinters will increase their strength with age according to Y. P. Loko.
It has been said that it is hard to test seven to 10-year-olds because
the strongest boys and girls will out perform the others due to their strength.
Westside concludes that the boys and girls who are the strongest should
stay above the rest in that category. The Westside System is conjugate in its
entirety and will completely avoid the Law of Accommodation by having a
large arsenal of training methods. As long as the coach is training the child
optimally, there should not be any problems of any kind. And this should be
true for all types of training including running, jumping or learning technical
skills. The coach must have an open mind to show new tasks and drills to the
child.
It is important to have a happy and enthusiastic child at home and at
practice.

17
 Chapter 2
Genetics and Heredity

When looking at young athletes who hope to play pro sports, there
are some things to consider. First, do you have a coach that is capable of tak-
ing the child to a pro level? You must have good coaching from a very young
age all the way through the time the athlete leaves college. Even at the pro
level, the coach will have a major influence on the athlete’s performance.
Playing football, for instance, calls for several special-skill coaches to
hone the athlete’s skills. The coach is also responsible for the athlete playing
the right position. Many parents send their child to special sports schools to
advance their athletic abilities. Attending these types of schools is also the
time more advanced coaches help determine in what position the child will
have the best chance to excel. They can determine if the child is too big for
his or her position or perhaps undersized for it. If your child plays on a team
that asks them to play a position they are not comfortable with, the child may
or may not excel at that position due to personality or due to maturity. This
will enlighten the coach on their ability to cope with stress.
The coach, of course, plays a very important role in the success and
development of a young athlete. On the other hand, it can be devastating
for the child if there is a personality conflict between the coach and the child
or with the coach and someone else in the child’s life. But, while the coach
can help guide the child throughout their young career, it is many times the
parents who can make or break the child’s sports career.
While men such as Jozef Drabik, PhD. specialized in the devel-
opment of children in sports, other experts such as Dr. Vladimir Issurkin
researched how to develop sports talent, how it can be identified through
body types, and how heredity can be very relevant. Of course, there are many
first generation athletes who make it to a professional level. To be a profes-
sional athlete in any sport there must be a gauge to fulfill. Limb length, body
fat, how much muscle mass, and the performance between muscle fiber types

19
 need to be considered. What is the athlete’s amount of flexibility and strength
endurance? There are many other factors and many tests the athlete must en-
dure. But what if the child comes from a professional family or a family with
former Olympic athletes, does that help? The answer appears to be yes.
If we look at a variety of sports there are many that have a parent
and child in the same sport, or the chances of two siblings each in the same
sport are high. In tennis there are the Williams sisters Venus and Serena. If
we look at combat sports like MMA, you have the Miller brothers, the Sham-
rocks, the Fedors along with the Pettis brothers and, of course, the Noguei-
ras and, maybe the most visible of all brothers are Nick and Nate Diaz, who
are some of the best fighters out of the cage. In the sport of boxing there is
Muhammad Ali and his world champion daughter, Laila, as well as Ken Nor-
ton, Sr. whose son, Ken Norton, Jr., is an All American football linebacker
and now coach. And in the lighter weight, consider the Marquez and Vasquez
brothers, both world champions.
On a very positive note, Floyd Mayweather started to box at a very
young age—about four years old. He went on to an illustrious career going
50 and 0, which is the best record by an American boxer. He has become a
very successful businessman with Mayweather promotions and the money
team, making $750 million in the ring himself. On a similar note, Oscar de la
Hoya, a multi-world boxing champion and CEO of Golden Boy Promotions,
made millions of dollars in the ring and later with his own promotion com-
pany. Once you are on the right track, the sky is the limit.
What about other sports? In hockey there are greats like Bobby and
Brett Hull. One of the most successful football father-son combos could be
the Mannings—first Archie, and then two Super Bowl Champion sons, Eli
and Peyton. How about Kellen Winslow Sr. and Kellen II—they were two
great football players. The Dorsetts, the Grieses—you all know Howie Long
from football to broadcasting and television commercials. And now, Chris.
Wow. You’ll even find coaches from the same family, such as the Shulas—
Don and his sons Mike and David.
All sports seem to have a father-son combination—like the Rick
Barry connection in basketball with Rick the father and his sons Brent, Jon,
Drew and now Canyon all professional basketball players as well as Gary
Payton and his son Gary Payton II. Also in basketball and a great player for
the Warriors are Seth Curry and his father, Dell, who was a professional bas-
ketball player as well. The Currys are a family of athletes: Dell’s wife, Sonya,

20
played volleyball in college, son Stephen also plays professional basketball
and their daughter plays volleyball in college.
There are so many families in sports, but no one can forget Bill Wal-
ton from UCLA and later the NBA as a player and now a television com-
mentator. One of his sons, Luke, also won multiple NBA championships as
did his father, and Luke now is coaching in the NBA.
Talent is talent, and sometimes it can show in two sports as is the
case with NBA star Grant Hill and his father Calvin who became the first
Dallas Cowboy to rush for 1,000 yards. This pair shows that athletic talent is
just that—athletic talent that can cross sports lines. Other father-son com-
binations to cross into different sports are Yannick Noah who was a world
champion in tennis and his son, Joakim Noah, a star in the NBA.
Athletic talent in families can be seen even in auto racing. A four-gen-
eration family to show greatness is the Pettys. First, Lee in the 50s and 60s,
a Hall of Famer, then his son Richard won 200 races. And, then, Kyle, Lee’s
grandson and Richard’s son, racked up 829 races until 2008 and is now a
commentator. Kyle’s son Adam was a race car driver as well, but was killed in
a crash during a practice in May 2000.
Although all sports have had such a connection with genetics, don’t
be dismayed if your father or mother was not a professional athlete. In the
past, many fathers had to provide for their families and did not have the time
or money to pursue a sports career. This does not mean that the parents did
not have the genetics or athletic talent to be a pro in one sport or another.
Although fathers usually get the credit, parents play an equal role in passing
down body type, muscle fiber type and the mental and emotional disposition
to be successful in sports. Take for example Ronda Rousey and her Judo
Black Belt mother AnnMaria De Mars, the first American to win a gold med-
al at the 1984 World Judo Championships. Ronda has now moved into the
World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc (WWE), which is an American entertain-
ment company that deals primarily in professional wrestling.
An athlete’s parents are very important in the quest to become a great
amateur or pro status athlete. Hopefully, understanding this helps both the
parents and sons and daughters choose the sport wisely and then dream and
plan for the young athlete. Remember, without a plan, you plan to fail.

21
 Chapter 3
Training for Flexibility

It must be noted that up to age six little attention to flexibility is nec-

essary. Joint mobility may start to be reduced, however, starting at seven years
old. But, a child should not do excessive stretching and bending at these early
ages. Permanent damage to the spine can result, which can manifest itself in
the form of stress fractures. Years ago I found the best route is to follow the
stretching protocols used by such experts as Thomas Kurz with his years of
experience for developing strength and flexibility concurrently.
Let’s not forget yoga. To practice yoga one must use the mental,
physical and spiritual aspects of life. Its origin is from ancient India. The
most popular types of yoga are Raja yoga and Hatha yoga. Yoga became
widespread in the West in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Yoga’s many
benefits and hidden effects include its meditative and spiritual core, but I
believe its contribution to balance is most important.
Children need lots of stimuli to combat boredom. The best method
is to do many stretching workouts and yoga classes along with direct sports
stretching in short doses. Remember, though, that the child won’t be 10 years
old forever. As the young athlete matures there will be a need to start a more
formal flexibility program.
The program Westside recommends is for the young athlete to work
on flexibility one or two times a day, but each session should last no longer
than 10 or 15 minutes.
The lower back can start to lose some flexibility due to injuries or
even by gaining weight around the waist. The sit and reach test, which was
first described by Wells and Dillon (1952) and is now widely used as a general
test of flexibility, is an excellent way to measure the flexibility of the low back
and hamstrings. The test itself is conducted like it sounds: The child would
sit on the floor with his or her legs stretched out in front. The soles of the
feet would be placed against a box. Both knees should be locked and pressed

23
 flat to the floor. The child would then reach forward with both hands and
hold that position until the distance is measured. One way to record the re-
sults is to have the position of the soles against the box stand for zero. Then,
anything past the feet is a positive number and anything before the feet is a
negative number. The idea is for the child over time to score positive num-
bers in this test.
The more mature athlete must also test the flexibility of the shoul-
ders, neck and thoracic spine along with the hips, tests that should be per-
formed with his or her coach.

Combining Strength Training with Flexibility is a Superior

Method
With a normal barbell, the bar is nine inches off the ground. By
standing on a two-inch, four-inch, or five-inch mat, a greater range of mo-
tion can be gained in the low back and hamstring. By gradually lowering hips
deeper and deeper, shoulder flexibility can be increased. For lower body, sit
on lower and lower boxes with the bar on the back. Again, this is combining
strength and flexibility.

Dynamic Flexibility is Far Superior to Static Stretching

And, remember, all joints do not gain flexibility at the same time
schedule. A flexible lower back does not mean the same athlete will have a
flexible neck and thoracic spine. If you lose 15 or 25 percent of your range
of motion you will operate at only 75 to 85 percent muscle capacity. This
could mean the difference between playing and not making the team.
Total Performance
Sports Talent
Special Strength

Physical Fitness
GPP

24
 Flexibility in all movement will be necessary to improve motor abil-
ities. Start with building physical fitness as the base of your development to
reach true potential of any child. A pyramid is only as tall as its base’s total
performance.

Building Flexibility Makes It Possible to Gain Agility

To have agility is being able to quickly perform highly coordinated,
fluid changes of direction of the entire body (Drabik, 1996; Bompa, 1944).
The training for agility should start with simple tasks at first, then
more sophisticated challenges that will teach the child greater agility, but also
confidence. Increasing agility can only be done with greater coordination,
power, speed and mobility. It is a way to measure the extent of the central
nervous system (CNS).
For a young athlete to build general agility, there are several ways to
obtain it. All types of ball games can build general agility. If one has the time
to build it, an obstacle course can lead to increasing greater agility.

Directed Agility
To achieve agility for a particular sport, the child must concentrate on
only the abilities needed for that one sport, but not doing the actual sport.
Too much time spent with one sport can lead to boredom or, much worse,
accommodation. The law of accommodation says that when the athlete
repeats the same exercises, volume, and intensity for too long their progress
will stop and many times go backwards.
To raise agility a wide variety of exercises must be rotated constant-
ly and can cause fatigue very fast, especially in young athletes. Using longer
rest intervals can help combat fatigue. Do not push young boys and girls too
fast. This is a mistake many coaches repeat over and over. More is not always
better; train optimally.
Flexibility and agility training in young boys and girls may lead to a
possible pro contract.

25
 Chapter 4
Endurance

Endurance must be built at an early age. Endurance is only developed

when the child is sufficiently fatigued. To increase endurance, one must work
through fatigue. When developing great endurance, the coach must train the
child at different intensity zones. This can be done by using just body weight
and other times by using different amounts of resistance. It can be done
without loading the spine. Using different amounts of resistance is a bench-
mark of the Westside Training Protocol.
Endurance training can determine the child’s physical response as
well as the character of the young child. There will be many methods to test
the child’s ability to resist fatigue. Of course, the ability to resist fatigue can
also depend on muscle type. Part of the instructor’s job when placing the boy
or girl in the proper sport is to recognize his or her muscle type and whether
the child can be successful in that sport.
People have two general types of skeletal muscle fibers: slow-twitch
(type I) and fast-twitch (type II). Slow-twitch muscles help enable long-en-
durance feats such as distance running, while fast-twitch muscles fatigue fast-
er, but are used in powerful bursts of movements like sprinting. Soccer play-
ers, rugby players, and wrestlers, will have more type II A muscle fibers. The
type II A fibers can be trained to perform, to some lesser extent, strength or
endurance, depending on what is needed. Type II B fibers are the maximal
force production fibers. The weightlifter or sprinter will have a higher degree
of type II B muscle fibers. They are not only the largest, but also have the
highest potential for increasing size and strength.
Even though endurance is a slow-paced activity it requires high-en-
ergy demands. Muscle endurance is just one part of building endurance. The
child must increase oxygen consumption and also anaerobic metabolism.
Strength training is a recognized part of strength endurance. The
child will use all muscle fiber to build great endurance, but primarily the slow
27
 muscle fibers will fatigue last. The slow fibers are developed by resisting work
at a given intensity over longer and longer periods of work. Rest intervals
must be planned as to shorten the time between work loads.
Resistance circuit training is one method to build endurance. Five to
seven exercises can be set forth with the child going from one to the next.
Circuit training can be done with a set rest interval between exercises or with-
out rest between exercises. As the child gains strength endurance along with
improving the cardiovascular and respiratory systems, many types of circuits
can be done.
Local endurance can be increased for many sports. For the legs,
high-rep squats with one or both legs are common. Belt squats will elimi-
nate using the back muscles and focus only on the legs. Hamstring and calf
exercises will build local endurance. High-rep back raises or reverse hypers
will build local endurance in the back. Dumb bell presses will do the same for
the upper back. Of course, push-ups, pull-ups and sit-ups are a form of local
endurance training.
Two special exercises for longer distance running is power walking
with a sled or pushing a wheel barrow. There are two primary methods:
1) Select an amount of weight to pull or push and go for one trip for as long
as possible.
2) Do several sets at a predetermined distance with a sled or wheel barrow
with the idea of shortening the rest intervals.
A child could also swim while pulling some type of resistance or wear a mask
that restricts oxygen consumption.
Note that in a single workout you must work on one type of endur-
ance. Trying to add strength training at the same time as great endurance
would cause conflicting demands. Work on strength first and endurance later.
The longer the workout, the longer the rest periods the child will need. Large
workouts mean you should take 72 hours of rest. Small workouts mean 12 or
24 hours of rest.
1. It has been shown that these five methods of endurance training
work best:
2. Circuit
3. Repetitive
4. Interval

28
 5. Continuous with constant
6. Variable intensity
The child also must watch his eating habits carefully and plan a diet
to maintain a constant weight or a diet designed to gain or lose weight, with
weight meaning body fat. Do not let the child over train. According to Dr.
Phil Maffetone (1994) and Thomas Kurz (Science of Sports Training, 2016),
over training can lead to injuries, not being able to get up at the proper time
in the morning, becoming fatigued early in his or her workout, not being
motivated to work out, not being able to stay on their diet, or becoming sick
too often.

29
 Chapter 5
Physical Fitness

Let’s look at physical fitness and its goals. Our goal is to allow the
child to play at least one sport at a high level. Basically, you must raise the
level of motor skills. To do this, all concepts must come together. In many
sports an athlete must possess such athletic abilities as throwing and catching
a ball, kicking a football or soccer ball, or dribbling a basketball and shooting
it in the basket from all sides of the court. Gymnastics and wrestling, if avail-
able, are very complimentary to gaining fitness.
Having improved fitness is the ability that the young athlete needs to
perform safely at a high level in a chosen sport. To have fitness is the ability
to raise work capacity over a long period … sometimes years.
Work capacity makes it possible to do work at differing intensities
and for different time limits. Work capacity calls on all special strength and
special endurance. Each sport requires fitness in a different method. Work
capacity must be held at a certain level that is constantly raised over time.
Preparedness is not always stable. It can rise at times just to fall at
other times. It can be referred to as the athlete’s level of preparedness. Pre-
paredness has two components: 1) slow changing, which is fitness, and 2) fast
changing, which is exercise induced fatigue. (Zatsiorsky, 1995).
The Westside System calls for the athlete to do training that has long
been based on mathematics and bar velocity when training with weights. The
weight training builds greater strength that allows for increased work capac-
ity and a higher level of preparedness. There are other skills that must be in
place as well—good nutrition, learning the motor skills for a special sport,
along with good means of restoration and psychological preparedness. All
of this adds up to raising the child’s General Physical Preparedness (GPP).
Raising GPP must happen before the child can focus on Specific Physical
Preparedness (SPP).

31
 The message for the child is that he or she must be fit for their sport as dif-
ferent sports require a somewhat different fitness to cope with a special sport
task under contest conditions. Always look to exercise specificity especially if
you specialize in one sport where a set of specific training methods are used
constantly because of certain imposed sport demands.

32
 Chapter 6
Learning Tactics

Learning tactics or simple plays can be taught during playground

exercising. Tactics are the basic foundation of setting and achieving a sports
goal. To be able to fulfill a sports goal, or the techniques to perform tactics,
one must achieve a degree of physical, mental, and technical skills to allow
the child to use their knowledge and experience.
Tactics and Techniques
The child must be able to perform during the game with well mas-
tered technique. Until you can participate in a game, there is no need for
tactics. For example, if a young boxer cannot throw a left hook, it is of little
use to plan to throw a left hook without a proper setup or trap. Also, the
young boxer must learn to set up a right hand with a jab after both punches
are mastered as a combination.
Sports and Tactics
Sports like track and field require few tactics. On the hand, wrestling
calls for some method or tactic to make a take-down or a pin.
Technical and Tactical Skills
A young baseball player at 10 years old must gain not only physical
skills, but also be able to hit better pitching. Or, he must learn the tasks a
catcher must have to call a fast ball, a change-up, or as he grows older, to pick
off a base runner. Can a pitcher constantly throw a fast ball over the plate or
hit a curve ball? The coach must track the player’s progress with such meas-
ures as batting average or the number of base steals each year.
Basically, as the child grows older he or she must constantly become
more reliable and also more confident in their abilities.
Competing
Athletes will find that to be more successful it is best to learn new

33
 tactics when competing against a lesser opponent. This is true for either an
individual opponent or in a team setting.
Technique and tactics can’t be separated, but must be thought of sep-
arately as a way to succeed. As the child’s skill level and the opponent’s skill
level each grows, technique and tactics must be mastered.
Tactics can depend on the opponent. Each team or opponent will
cause the child to learn to alter the tactics to some degree. To be successful
the child must learn new tactics; and the child must go slowly as to master
the new tactics correctly. As competitions come with a greater degree of dif-
ficulty, the athlete needs to realize that opponents may try new tactics, or they
may bend the rules somehow. But being the best athlete possible, the child
must try to always obey the rules. In boxing, a high skilled boxer may request
a larger ring to move about his opponent. On the other hand, a hard puncher
will ask for a small ring to stay close to his opponent. The environment, as
you can see, can be used as a tactic.
For example, time periods can cause a change in tactics. Again, in boxing, the
number of punches per round can be a tactic used to try to conserve some
of the athlete’s energy for the last round of matches. Another tactic can be
talking to your opponent to take your mind off the game.
It is most important for an athlete to master his or her techniques be-
fore using tactics. Tactics are developed in training and used during competi-
tions. When an athlete uses new tactics he or she will find that some work on
some opponents, but they may not work on some who have seen it all. The
important learning here is to always work on new tactics in training before
trying them in a contest.
To conclude this section, remember that before training on tactics,
Drabik advises that the athlete must be very fit, have good technique skills,
and develop a high degree of mental toughness and knowledge of his or her
sport. The last thought about tactics is that many young boys and girls will
compete at one level or another. After the competitive years some will be-
come coaches themselves. With all you have now learned reading this book,
you can now benefit your young athlete and it becomes your turn to teach all
aspects of the game, including tactics.

34
 Chapter 7
Before Choosing a Sport

Long before a child starts to compete in a sport, they must build a

base of basic skills. A child should learn basic skills such as throwing, catch-
ing, jumping, good balance, and some degree of fitness. This is just play-
ground activity that should begin at four or five years old. If not, it will be
very difficult for a child to be equal to their peers and they will never acquire
the sports development to compete with the boys and girls who started at an
early age of four or five years old on the playground.
Once in school, a gym teacher should recognize in what sport a child
may excel. By watching the children at play or in gym class, the teacher can
recognize which boys and girls possess great strength or great endurance.
The strong child will dominate in the early stages of play, but will tire quickly.
Conversely, the child that has a great degree of endurance can maintain their
ability to continue to play without slowing down or showing a decrease in
their movement abilities.
In would appear that basic gymnastics is a suitable base to start. It
teaches good body awareness including balance, flexibility and body coordi-
nation. Participating in gymnastics is advised by most wrestling and weight
lifting coaches. It is used by the high skilled weight lifters from countries like
Russia, China and Bulgaria.
It can help the child engage in many sports, especially ones that call
for kicking or catching a ball. They could try a sport like soccer where play
is seldom interrupted or American football where play is interrupted by a
short rest between plays, or baseball, a slow played game with many breaks
between plays. Basketball, on the other hand, is a game with fast action then
stops for foul shots or time outs. Other sports like boxing or MMA require
not only skill strength and endurance, but also a high degree of hand and
foot speed, plus courage.
The coach must determine what sport the child is best suited for, not

35
 the spot where there is a void on some random team that needs filling. To the
parents, choose a coach carefully. In most sports it’s the basic skills that are
not taught at an early age. And basics are just that—basics of all sports.
Let’s look at basketball. The athlete must shoot, dribble, guard their
opponent, rebound and run. Like all ball sports, one must learn plays, mean-
ing tactics, and show determination to win.
In the end there are only a few who will become professional athletes.
It is about one-tenth of one percent, and much less for an athlete who plays
two sports.
Look at playing football. Does the child like physical contact? What
is the preference, offense, defense or both? Can the child take pain? Tough
question, but pain is a part of some sports. While a child can play one sport,
he or she may not be able to play a second sport. There is reason one plays
either tennis or golf, but not both.
The coach must consider the child’s strength, endurance, coordina-
tion, and flexibility before choosing the correct sport.
As you can see, there are many aspects of fitness to consider before
placing the child into a sport that will possibly lead them into a long, profes-
sional career.
.

36
 Chapter 8
Selecting a Sport

By 10 years old it is time to join a sports team. For the last three years
the child should have been going through a series of evaluations to deter-
mine for which sport the child is best suited. Many boys and girls are recruit-
ed to play on an organized team. After a large group of children are assem-
bled, a selection process begins. After competition becomes greater, it will be
much more difficult to find a place on the more advanced teams. Hopefully,
the three years spent on the theory of the Rule of Three will make it much
easier to advance from Little League to Major League.
When selecting a sport to participate in for a long career, there must
be a standard for the child to measure up against. (Wazny 1989). There are
many things to consider and take into account including his or her flexibili-
ty, speed and strength ability. Expect to honestly answer difficult questions.
Does the child have the right proportions—meaning height and body type
and many times the genetics—to participate in a sport like basketball? Or,
should he or she be a 125-pound MMR fighter? Does the child have the
correct personality for the chosen sport? Is the child mentally prepared to
endure fatigue? Is the child motivated for the chosen sport?
The author has found normal boys and girls will only give you
normal results. This means the greater the potential the child has, the more
the coach and parent must understand and concur with their idiosyncrasies.
Westside has experience working with an athlete’s idiosyncrasies: the strong-
est powerlifter of all time is a Westside lifter. His lifts are like no other and
his mindset is like no other.
We all know the names of great coaches in their respective sports.
These are our greatest coaches, but there are countless so called coaches
of which you have never heard. Within all of our universities in the United
States, not one has a degree focused on coaching; instead most programs are
in physical education studies with emphasis in various areas of physical edu-

37
 cation from sports management to sports studies, strength and conditioning,
and general sports education. This lack of emphasis on coaching is a major
problem and is not being dealt with. Only Westside has a certificate for the
science of special strength. A subject that must be addressed is the progres-
sion of the athlete from 10 years old to the age of a polished athlete, which
is generally 19 to 21 years old, especially for the young athlete that far ex-
ceeds the expectations of all others and is destined for a professional career
or an Olympic athlete status.
After 10 years old there is a progression for increasing sports excel-
lence. The Soviet Union found a method for evaluating sports progress was
a constant evaluation from 10 years to 13 years, from 13 years to 15 years,
from 15 years to 17 years, from 17 years to 19 years, and from 19 year to 21
years. By 21 years old the athlete was polished or removed from the sports
program.
Remember, it is just as important to choose the correct coach as it is
to choose the right sport for the child.
In the United States, coaches tend to use different training methods.
What I mean is that many coaches use their own training method instead of
time-proven methods, such as many methods from the former Soviet Union.
Special exercises such as Plyometrics are done incorrectly or too often and at
the wrong time. This simply means that the coach must always have a correct
progression of special exercises over a long-term plan. The coach must know
how to start the training of seven to 10-years-old to train them correctly so
they can continue on the long path to being a polished athlete.
Many experts, such as Drabik and Tabachnik, have said it is hard to
evaluate children seven to 10 years old because the strongest boys and girls
will perform at a higher rate due to their strength. This finding told West-
side what we believed all along—strength is a major factor in becoming tops
in your sport at any age. This is why top track and field athletes along with
combat athletes come to Westside to get that edge to go to World or Olym-
pic games, the UFC, or specialized combat sports such as judo, karate or all
forms of grappling.
In selecting a sport, the child must pass periodic tests for choosing a
sport based on their emotional status, if they understand the sport’s psychol-
ogy, and their willingness to participate in the simplest forms of restoration.
The coach must understand that there are three main stages of training: the
training itself, competition, and restoration. The child will certainly change

38
both physically and emotionally as they go from possibly four to 10 years old.
The coach must train the child optimally and learn to balance sports with
studies. The family’s obligation is to afford the time and energy to reach the
child’s ultimate goals while he or she moves toward becoming a young adult.

39
 Chapter 9
Speed

It is said that if you want to be a professional athlete, pick parents

with good genetics. It is common to see a father and son both play in the
NFL or the NBA or major league baseball. This is genetics in play. But, with
proper training, a highly skilled athlete can be trained and developed.
To develop speed, one must increase jumping ability. This is explosive
strength. Explosive strength is defined as the ability to rapidly increase force
(Tidow, 1990) -The steeper the increase of strength in time, the greater the
explosive strength.
There are many factors to consider in developing speed. Speed in
sport movement comes from strength and endurance.
Let’s look at the three main elements of speed: 1) frequency of
movements, 2) reaction time, and 3) sprinting. Frequency of movements is
speed of execution of a cyclic locomotion. It is related to the ability of the
muscles to overcome some amount of external resistance.
While the best age to obtain maximal speed is 24 to 26 years, it takes
many years to build a base to make this possible. There are many special
physical qualities that must be developed starting at seven and sometimes
even four years old.
All speed is measured by time. Reaction time is important for all
sports. It is the time one reacts to a movement. It could be the ability to
block a shot, or parry a punch, or throw a punch. It could even be the time
to react to a takedown. Some may have a slow reaction time, but the ability to
move at a very high speed. Some can move very fast for one or a few move-
ments. Others can continually move their arms and legs very fast over a long
period of time. The coach should note what type of sport the child would
excel at by recognizing the different physical qualities.
Body type must be considered while guiding the child into a sports

41
 program. Long muscles—meaning long arms and legs—tend to be able to do
athletic tasks more efficiently than those with short limbs. The short-limbed
boys and girls are better for pure strength sports such as weight lifting.
To be extremely fast, it is most important to have a mixture of max-
imal strength, speed strength along with speed endurance and reaction time.
All of this must coincide with timing, flexibility and technique. The child may
have fast arm movements, but possess slow leg movements. Some children
have very good coordination in some movements, but not all movements.
This means the coach must use many tests to decide for which sport the
child is best suited. This can be proven by special exercises that will deter-
mine what type of speed sport the child will excel—explosive strength or
strength endurance. Remember there is a great difference between a sprinter
and a long distance runner.
A coach must decide if the child can play his or her sport with per-
fect technique at top speed. What sport can they play at top speed for the
complete game? The child may play baseball with good technique for the
entire game due to baseball being somewhat slow-paced. But can the same
child play with good technique for an entire basketball game due to its fast
pace for the complete game?
Remember, many baseball and football players are better track ath-
letes due to not mastering top techniques in ball sports. Training the athlete
for speed can be very deceiving without the coach being completely honest
with the parents, athlete, and most importantly, him- or herself. This honesty
can save the athlete years of training for the wrong sport.
Emotional stress can affect speed technique and one’s reaction time.
If you choose the wrong sport for the child, he or she will not be comfort-
able, will never excel at the particular sport, and will appear without confi-
dence.
Much more information can be found about speed in Science of Sports
Training by T. Kurz, and Supertraining by Mel C Siff.
Reaction time and sprinting will be covered in the next two chapters.

42
 Chapter 10
Reaction Time

Reaction time is viewed as the time between stimulus and response to

a movement. As mentioned, the pure speed of a sport movement depends
on strength and endurance. But, if you perform the same movement or ex-
ercises over and over, a speed barrier will occur. According to Sozouski, the
speed barrier happens even if the athlete’s strength, endurance and flexibility
improve. The sport movement can only move at a certain speed.
To build reaction time, not only reactive ability must be trained, but
speed-strength methods must be used as well. Strong legs must be devel-
oped—first through rope jumping. This will build athletic ability through
timing full body coordination and endurance.
Sled pulling is a very natural way to increase leg and hip strength.
Westside Barbell’s A.T.P., a special belt squat machine that can be used to
squat with a belt around the waist, is a valuable tool for the child to build
strong legs with belt squatting. With belt squatting, like sled pulling, there is
almost no spinal pressure.
While these two special exercises provide constant muscle tension,
they can provide fast explosive power. For increasing speed strength, light
loads must be used. This can be done in the A.T.P. Squatting, walking, and
small step-ups should be used in many ways. Sled pulling can duplicate
walking forward, backward, sideways as well as being able to use any weight
movement with a barbell or dumbbell.
With the exception of rope jumping, no child should do depth jumps
that cause a sudden stretch preceding a voluntary effort. Plyometrics (depth
jumps) can be very dangerous for anyone with excessive use or not knowing
how to land. For this reason, Westside has a jumping program based on our
past experience and the work of Tadeusz Starzynski, Henryk Solanski and
Anprzej Lasocki.

43
 Jumping
Let’s start with jumping. The student’s first method of jumping
should be general and directed. There is not much need for sport-specific
jumping until beginning the “Rule of 10.”
The book Explosive Power and Jumping Ability for All Sports (Starzynski,
Kurz, 1999) details a series of kneeling jumps. Kneeling jumps came from
dance training and moved into all sports. It calls for a combination of speed,
strength and coordination to develop a high level of jumping.
Start with jumping rope. Jumping rope includes all three—speed,
strength and coordination—by bringing together the involvement of the
arms and legs.
By doing explosive strength training in the form of jumping you can
reduce some weight training with heavy weights, which may not be advisable
for some children.

The Methods
Begin by reviewing the illustrations. Start exercise by sitting on the
floor and pressing the dumb bell or Kettlebells overhead. Next, while sitting
on knees, jump onto feet. Eventually, add weight or resistance. This can be
done in a single jump or a series of multi-jumps. By using multi-jumps, the
exercise can increase sport-specific strengths, agility and jumping endurance.
A second method is box jumping. This means the child stands in
front of a box and jumps onto a box of a predetermined height. There are
many ways to test.

Examples

1. Jump with two feet

2. Sit on box and jump onto second box on one foot with no pre run

3. Switch from left to right foot with no pre run

4. Bounding on left foot

5. Bounding on right foot

6. Jumping sideways left or right

44
 * Always use acceleration for multi-jumps.

* Always try to land on soft surface.

When building strength with jumping, use resistance in the form of
ankle weight, a weight vest, dumbbells, Kettlebells or a barbell.
To make jumps more difficult, jump out of sand or foam with or
without some form of resistance. Please note: Plyometric exercises—mean-
ing depth jumps or free falling on a box—should not be used for training
children under 10 years old! A rule of thumb is that one should be able to
squat two times body weight before depth jumping.

Throwing, punching and pulling

Jumping is just part of the equation. The child must be able to also
throw, punch or pull without becoming fatigued. This must be built in other
ways or methods. One of those methods is medicine ball throws and catch-
es. Many sports require the athlete to throw or catch a ball. All field events
require throwing an implement. The field event implements have much
different weights, so the medicine balls must have many weights and methods
to choose from. Why? If we look at the training for the shot put, their train-
ing with a heavy weight is about 50 percent of all total training. The javelin
thrower, on the other hand, spends only 15 to 20 percent on weight training.
Why is this? Let’s look at the release of a shot put. It is about 14 me-
ters per second (m/s) for a 16-pound shot. The release time for a javelin is at
least 30 m/s. This is due to the force velocity curve and shows why medicine
balls of different weights must be used to develop special strengths.
Like with jumping, where many variations are needed to test or
measure progress for vertical and horizontal jumping, medicine ball throwing
involves different weights and directions—off knees, seated, overhead, and
one-arm throwing for distance and height. There will be several methods for
jumping and medicine ball work inside this chapter. The most-used test for
explosive upper body power is while kneeling and throwing a medicine ball
from behind the head. There is not much information on weights for chil-
dren, but women use a two-kilogram medicine ball and men use a three-kilo-
gram ball.

45
 Chapter 11
Sprinting

Last, but certainly not least in importance is short sprinting. The pre-
vious chapter about jumping and sled pulling pertains to sprinting ability.
The definition of a sprint is to run as fast as possible for a short dis-
tance. This means no deceleration. The length of a sprint should be limited
to a distance where after the acceleration phase the top speed phase is held
for the entire length of the sprint.
To be a good sprinter you hopefully have good genetics, meaning
parents or grandparents with the right muscle fibers. For finding what is the
best sport for the child, testing the speed to run to a base and base to base is
helpful. But, you should use many distances to test ones sprinting time. Five,
10, 20 and 30 meters are good indicators of speed and fitness.
There are many other variables to consider in addition to genetics. In
sprinting, event speed is determined by fast or slow muscle fibers; your max-
imal strength and endurance to cover a predetermined distance; the excita-
bility of the central nervous system (CNS); and, of course, good coaching.
These are the factors that will bring the highest possible results. The use of
jumping exercises, medicine ball throws and short sprinting are major tools
for the coach to employ.
Everyone likes a highlight on ESPN for football, but for the record,
you have four plays to make a first down. Testing sprinting ability calls for
timing five yards and less to find if the child has the ability to hit the hole
as it opens when playing football. Many sports must have fast lateral move-
ments including tennis and baseball. Always try to improve non directional
sprints. Soccer is one such sport for non directional sprints. A standing long
jump into a sand pit is also a valuable measurement. As you see, there is more
to sprinting than just going in a straight line.
Is the child able to recover quickly after a sports play? Or, does the
child require long rest intervals to recover? The child would be advised to run
47
 track and not football if recovery is slow.
Recovery methods—or active rest—can be pulling a weight sled,
working on a treadmill, or other means such as playing ball games.
Rope jumping and box jumps play an important role for the sprint-
er. Box jumping is a tool to measure the child’s explosive power. A seven to
10-year-old can measure their explosive power by jumping up onto a box.
If the box jump goes up, he or she is more powerful. If the box jump goes
down, his or her explosive power has gone down. A young child will certainly
gain weight. You should let them as long as the box jump goes up.
Work on acceleration only to build the ability to sprint. Acceleration
is the major part of the sprint and next is top speed maintenance. Do not
run long distances for the sprint. Running long distances will cause one to
slow down while sprinting because your body will feel the need to conserve
its energy.

48
 Chapter 12
Special Strength Training

There are three methods of strength training: the Maximal Effort

Method, the Dynamic Effort, and the Repeated Effort Method. We’ll look at
each one individually.

The Maximal Effort Method

The Maximal Effort (M-E) Method involves lifting—exercis-
ing—against maximal resistance. This can be a heavy barbell exercise for
a one-repetition maximum or lifting a non moveable bar, which refers to
isometrics. One-repetition maximum (more often referred to as a 1RM) in
weight training is the maximum amount of force that can be generated in
one maximal contraction. This method should not be used until a child is at
least 10 years old.

The Dynamic Method

The Dynamic method refers to lifting or throwing a non maximal
load with the greatest possible speed. F=MA. The repetition range must be
monitored to maintain maximal velocity. Consult A. S. Prilepin’s data from
1974 to establish the number of repetitions and sets for the optimal number
of lifts at a certain percentage.
For children 10 and above, it is recommended to use a minimum
number of lifts to the optimal amount of lifts for speed.
Strength
70 % (3 to 6 repetitions per set) No less than 12 And no more than 18 Lifts
80 % (2 to 4 repetitions per set) No less than 10 And no more than 15 Lifts
90 % 1 to 2 repetitions per set) No less than 4 And no more than 7 Lifts

The Repeated Effort Method

The Repeated Effort Method calls for the athlete to lift a less than

49
 maximal load to failure. Only in the last few repetitions do the muscles de-
velop maximum force. It is most common to use a classical lift to perform
the Repeated Effort Method. The Westside System calls for one to use sin-
gle-joint exercises for this method. Using single-joint exercises is much safer
and more productive as it addresses the weak muscle groups.

Which Training Method Should You Use?

The M-E Method is far superior to all strength methods due to its
ability to improve both intramuscular and intermuscular coordination as well
as the central nervous system (CNS). Remember the muscles adapt only to
the demands placed upon them. The M-E Method can be used for any bar-
bell exercise. The child should learn how to do the five classical lifts, squat,
bench, deadlift as well as the snatch and the clean and jerk. While the snatch
and clean and jerk are always seen as very technical lifts, so are the three pow-
erlifts (squat, bench and deadlift).
All barbell exercises should be done with perfect form. However,
perfect form is seldom the case due to a lack of expertise by many coaches.
From seven to 10 years old, general strength should be the base of
their training. It must be difficult, but safe for the child. This means mini-
mal stress on the spine and other joints. How can this be done? The answer
is belt barrow walking, sled work, wheel barrow walking, and the Westside
A.T.P., a special belt squat machine that can be used to squat with a belt
around the waist. The A.T.P. provides tremendous muscular work with a
minimal amount of stress on the spine.
All of these devices will provide not only building muscles in all
major muscle groups, but also great conditioning regardless of whether the
athlete is developing explosive strength, maintaining top speed, or building
maximal strength. The different special strength’s can be built separately by
using light or heavy weight and choosing the correct distance to cover.

Belt Barrow
Let’s look at the methods used with this device. First, add weight
when possible on the weight holder and have the athlete walk forward with
their hands free. Next, have them walk forward or backward while throwing
punches with boxing gloves. Also, he or she can throw a medicine ball or any
type of ball while walking. For extra stabilization, the athlete can walk with a
light bar with Kettlebells hooked with mini-bands overhead.

50
 For more variety, the athlete can use ankle weights or a weight vest.
On other days while walking with the belt barrow, he or she can hook a sled
to their belt while walking forward. The combinations are endless and limited
only to your imagination.

Weight Sled
This simple device comes with low cost, but it’s worth a million.
By hooking the sled to his or her weight belt, the athlete can walk
forward or backward or even sideways for lateral movement and strength.
For lower body strength, he or she can hook the sled to the weight
belt or for direct hamstring work; the athlete should hold the strap between
the legs from behind with the strap held below knee level. The lower the
strap, the better the results will be.
For upper work, use a second strap and duplicate any barbell or
dumbbell exercise you wish. It can be curls, presses, upright rows, or external
rotation work. The work is only limited to the imagination. You could also
do football pass blocking or for the wrestlers, pummeling or pushing the
strap down such as when an athlete controls his opponent’s head in a match.
Just think about your sport and duplicate its moves. Also you can use ankle
weights or a weight vest or carry a medicine ball. Combining work could be
pulling a sled while pushing a wheel barrow.

Sled Pulling for Strength

The sled can play a large role in the young athlete’s strength training,
upper body or lower body development. For the lower body, hook the sled
strap to your lifting belt and walk forward for the calves, hamstrings, glutes,
and posterior hips. When walking backward, it builds knee extensions and
the front of the hips. Hook a strap around ankles to build strong hips. When
walking sideways, it builds lateral strength and speed.
By wearing ankle weights or a weight vest, you can make the sled
work more challenging. Or, carry a medicine ball overhead, or a light barbell
for stability. For females who suffer from knee problems, they can carry a
medicine ball at waist line while pulling a sled. This will automatically correct
alignment with the hip—no more knock knees that cause many injuries.
By using a second strap, you can duplicate any dumb bell or barbell
exercise that can be done in a gym. Now you are building strength while
gaining GPP and fitness.

51
 For power sports that cover a short distance with some type of rest
intervals, trips of 60 yards work best. The number of trips will depend on
the child’s fitness level. Be sure to let the child fully recover to maintain a set
pace.
Choose the weight on the sled carefully. If the child can not walk in
a straight line, it is too heavy. Always keep in mind the sport for which the
child is training and duplicate the sport movement with the upper body. One
example is running backwards for a defensive player. Another example is a
drill where the child holds the strap overhead like pass blocking or guarding a
basketball player. Just use your imagination.
Westside has 10-year-old athletes who would complete a mile and a
quarter in one workout. The sled will build the entire body from toe to fin-
gertips. It is very time effective and well worth the money. When it comes to
sports equipment, it is the best cost ratio investment you can make.
As mentioned previously, there can be many ways to use the weight
sled. First, for the lower body, the most common method is to walk forward.
For building strength development, over stride and land on your heels while
walking. Upon contacting the ground, immediately pull through with the heel
very powerfully. It will duplicate the start of a calf-ham-glute raise. This will
build the glute and hamstrings in the most natural way possible. For power
development, 60 yards a trip is best. The rest intervals can be as short as 40
seconds, much like the rest intervals in football, but no longer than two min-
utes to allow for improving the child’s fitness level.
The coach should choose three amounts of weight ranging from 10
pounds to 70 pounds for larger or stronger boys and girls. At younger ages,
boys and girls will be equal, but this changes at puberty. During the week, use
the heaviest weights on Monday; reduce the weight somewhat on Wednesday
and then again on Friday. Always hook the sled strap to the weight belt. Mon-
day could be 12 trips, 18 trips on Wednesday and six trips on Friday. Monday
will raise maximum strength, Wednesday will increase strength endurance,
and Friday can be one of two things—a warmup for sports training or for
restoration.
The walk should be in a balanced and coordinated manner. Always
use natural arm movement. If the child loses balance and is not walking in a
straight line, the weight on the sled is too difficult.
Walking backward is a great hip and knee developer. It can be done

52
at normal speed at a fast pace. For lateral strength and speed development,
walk from side to side. Always divide the trips up left to right and right to left
evenly. Walking forward should be used for the most volume. The recom-
mendation for most sports is two-thirds forward and one-third going back-
wards.
For upper body work, slide a second strap through the strap that is
attached to the sled. Any special exercise that can be done in the gym can be
performed with the strap. The advantage is that as you become stronger, your
fitness level also is being raised by walking instead of sitting down inside the
gym. The machines will build muscle, but not motion, meaning coordination.
Just a few of the special exercises the athlete can do while walking
backwards are curls, upright rows, and internal and external rotations. When
walking forward, the child can do such special exercises as curls, peck decks,
triceps’ extensions, and overhead pressing. When considering special exercis-
es, always think of the child’s sport. If it is football, you can duplicate pass
blocking. If it’s grappling, you can use pummeling. Use two-arm passing
for basketball. While walking sideways, use one arm for tennis or hand ball.
These ideas should enlighten the coach about special methods to increase
strength in all possible angles that are used in most, if not all, sports.
One special exercise for the hamstrings is to walk forward with the
sled strap behind you held below the knee level for two or three trips of 60
yards. Walk forward for trips of 400 meters for endurance. For beginners use
the heel-touch method for strength endurance. For more advanced boys and
girls 800 meters can also be a test to build muscular endurance. When a child
cannot power walk 400 meters, break it up into 100 or 200 meter intervals. A
rest interval between trips should be long enough to almost fully recover. Use
three different weights to cover the distance. A light ankle or weight vest or
both can provide different amounts of resistance to set record time. Always
monitor the child’s fitness status as not to over exert the child and put their
health in jeopardy.
The sled is a very affordable, dependable, and valuable tool for
strength and conditioning. Add a weight belt and a few weights and you have
an arsenal of special training methods at your disposal. By using a power sled
your young athlete can increase muscular strength, aerobic endurance and
fitness as well as raise anaerobic fitness and endurance while at the same time
raising maximal oxygen debt.

53
 Wheel Barrow
Westside has a special wheel barrow for Strongman contests or for
conditioning for all sports. It has weight holders to add resistance. Its name is
the War Wagon, but any wheel barrow can be used. Load it up with weights
or sand, dirt, gravel—anything will work. By pushing or pulling a wheel
barrow, it builds the entire body from the feet and calves to the traps. But an
extra bonus is that it causes the athlete to balance it as he or she pushes or
pulls it along on one wheel. This is a major plus as it builds a strong grip.
There are three different ways to use it. One can push it forward,
which does lots of hip and glute work. The athlete can pull it backward for a
lot of hip and quad work, plus a real test for the grip. Or, a third method is
for the athlete to face away from the wheel barrow and pull it behind him or
herself like a rickshaw. This, again, builds a strong grip and lots of glutes.
Just like a weight sled, the wheel barrow is a great deal for your mon-
ey.

Using the Athletic Training Platform, the A.T.P.

Westside was doing belt squats in 1975 standing on two boxes with
the weight supported on a third platform. Now, Westside has a patented
cable device with a platform that lets the athlete do countless sports-related
exercises.
An athlete can do belt squatting onto a box or regular squats. With
the A.T.P.’s special squat racks the athlete can have a bar on his or her back or
front squat while also having great resistance held around the waist to cause
two accelerations: one with the legs, the other with the back. The athlete can
also do cleans or clean and jerks. For the athlete, having the belt around his
or her waist supplies two separate amounts of acceleration for squats and
deadlifts. The athlete can also turn around on the platform and two athletes
can do football drills, Rugby drills, medicine ball throws, throwing punches or
throwing a baseball, football, shot put and the like. The list goes on and on.
Again, the only thing that limits the work you can do on the A.T.P. is your
imagination.

General Physical Preparation Training

With young boys and girls, it is best to exercise with as little weight
bearing as possible. What we are discussing is General Physical Preparation
(GPP) Training. This type of training builds coordination, endurance, explo-

54
sive speed and strength speed, not to mention flexibility, acceleration, static
strength, and indirectly, skill for all sports.

Strength Building with Rubber Bands

Westside made training with rubber bands popular in the mid-1990s.
Rubber bands can be connected to the barbell for accommodating resistance,
but by using the bands alone, one can do any exercise that can be done with
a barbell or dumbbell. This includes curls, presses, squats, deadlifts, push-ups
with bands held behind the back, assisted pull-ups, external rotations, leg
curls, throwing punches with the band held behind. And on and on ...

The Westside Training System

Zaremba (1982) coined three blocks of training: accumulation,
intensification, and transformation. Accumulation is where a large volume
of training is possible to accomplish at a steady pace. Intensification is where
the athlete starts to introduce sport-specific exercises that mimic sport move-
ments while reducing some non specific exercises. Transformation is the
period that calls for the athlete to transform him or herself into a specialized
athlete. However, when switching from block to block some of the work
done in the last block is lost due to eliminating some of the special work in
the form of exercises and workload.
Is there a better way? Yes, as explained in the Conjugate Training
System Chapter, the Westside System builds explosive speed strength on
two workouts, Maximal-Effort (M-E) sessions on two workouts, and builds
the lacking muscle groups by using single-joint special exercises. This can be
done year-round. For important contests, a delayed transformation stage is
set in place. Twenty-eight days out from a major contest the athlete trains
at 50 percent intensity. At 21 days out the athlete the athlete takes all time
records. At 14 days out the athlete trains at 75 percent of new record made
at 21 days out. And seven days out the athlete uses an active rest period. This
schedule makes it possible for the athlete to make the goals of the contest
day.

Training the Young Athlete

When training seven to 10-year-olds with a barbell you should use
a youth lifting bar. The young athlete should train their abdominal muscles
(abs) before and after each workout along with the hamstrings and low back.
The lumbar region of the spine, more commonly known as the lower back,

55
 includes many ligaments and soft tissue. Athletes must have sufficient blood
pumped into it on a daily basis to avoid injuries.
As you can see, Westside’s foundation for training is general strength
exercises. This is the foundation for directed and sport-specific exercises
that increase the strength of all muscle groups, small and large. This founda-
tion assists in insuring that the athlete is well balanced and strong to reduce
muscle and joint injuries. Westside’s theory of strength and conditioning is
to incorporate both simultaneously and build the muscles through general
exercises while walking with some type of device as discussed earlier in this
chapter.

Injury Prevention
The key to injury prevention is doing general exercises from many
angles to build great strength around joints, which reduces instability. Most
injuries are because of having weak muscles that attach to joints. A study
by Orchard (1997) showed that a bilateral deficit of eight percent can cause
injury. Orchard also found that if the hamstring muscle is 40 percent of the
strength of the quadriceps, a hamstring injury is quite possible.
Laura Dodd, a former 200-meter sprinter turned powerlifter, had a
ratio of 60 percent hamstring 40 percent quadriceps ratio, which was tested
at Ohio State University. They said it was by far the highest ever recorded at
the Exercise Physiology Lab. General exercise made it possible to create a
foundation for directed strength.
These general exercises are close to, but not identical to directed exer-
cises that prepare the child to use sport-specific strength training later in their
career. This is the same process for jumping. The child needs to do very basic
jumps at first then on to the competitive jumping events. As you can see, if
you are to reach the top, you need a wide base. Just like a pyramid it can only
be as tall as its base—weight training at a ratio of 20 percent barbell and 80
percent small special exercises.
Even the young athlete must find a way to increase volume and inten-
sity if he or she is to become a master sports person by 19 to 21 years of age.

56
 Chapter 13
Conjugate Training System

The Conjugate System was first developed in 1972 at the Dynamo

Club in the former Soviet Union. One group of 70 high-ranked weight
lifters trained with 25 to 40 special weight lifting exercises for a period of
time. When asked about the wide variety of exercises available, one lifter was
satisfied, but the rest of the group wanted more special exercises to choose
from. While it was intended for the highest level athletes, Westside has used
the Conjugate System since 1970 with the switching of special exercises! But
switching exercises is just a small part of what makes the Conjugate System
successful.
The Conjugate System’s main purpose is to raise a lagging motor sys-
tem for improving specific motor abilities. The system can eliminate a lagging
muscle group or raise specific motor abilities that do not function correctly.
But be aware that the Conjugate System is only as good as the coach that lays
out the program.
The Westside Conjugate System calls for changing from high barbell
volume training to very low barbell volume –roughly 40 percent—72 hours
later. On the high volume training days the intensities are 75 percent to 85
percent. While on the low barbell volume training day—meaning M-E or
Maximal Effort training—the intensities are 100 percent plus.
Because special strength training is measured by velocities, on the
Dynamic Method day Westside strives to lift sub maximal weights as fast as
possible. On M-E day, the bar velocity will be very slow by nature to build
great force.
While a Block Training System works on one specific motor ability or
velocity, the Conjugate System makes it possible to train what is needed at any
time. You must recognize when doing a block training system becomes a detrain-
ing system. After a hypertrophy block within a 21-day period, you start to lose
the muscle mass you just gained. This is true for power and maximal strength.

57
 Westside uses the Conjugate System to replace the far-outdated
Block System. During the weekly plan, two workouts for speed or explosive
strength are used. And two workouts for M-E are done as well. Training
with a barbell is 20 percent of the total volume and 80 percent is on special
exercises to build a special strength from explosive strength to strength en-
durance. The coach must be able to recognize what muscle group or special
strength the child lacks. The lagging muscle group can cause a technical
problem that can stop progress in its tracks.
The Westside Conjugate System makes it possible to balance all
methods: velocities, intensities, volume, and exercises during the entire yearly
plan. The main reason one fails to make progress is a lack of knowledge of
special exercises and when to rotate them before they stop working. This also
happens when repeating the same volume over a prolonged period. This is
called accommodation.
The Conjugate System solves the problem of accommodation by
constantly using new stimuli during a weekly plan. For jumping, one can
jump onto a box with ankle weights one workout and then use a barbell the
next. The next workout can be with dumb bells or a weight vest. The same
variety can be put in place for sled pulling. You can do this by using at least
three different weight loads and three different distances. Westside uses five
different bars to squat by rotating to a new bar every fourth week; and the
same for benching. When doing Olympic weight lifting, Dr. Medvedev had
his lifters rotate among 100 slightly different workouts.
If one has a child stay with the same training program over a long pe-
riod of time, the young athlete will experience diminishing returns. Dr. Ben
Tabachink says to adapt to training is to never fully adapt. When one fully
adapts to training, the boy or girl will suffer from accommodation. As you
can see, all training must interact together seamlessly. There is a time to train
with bands and a time to train with chains. By having many combinations of
training methods, you should never experience accommodation, which is a
general law of biology.
Training must always become somewhat more difficult to cause one
to improve. This means adding more volume at the correct intensities, intro-
ducing new exercises or a new method, or bringing a new athlete to the team.
Bringing in new talent can make all athletes perform at a higher level, not
only physically, but emotionally and psychologically.
Training programs must change to avoid accommodations. This

58
means you must go through a series of special exercises from general to spe-
cific and on to sports specific, which means getting to the actual sports event
for which the athlete has been training. The Conjugate Method is the most
effective training method to avoid accommodation.

59
 Chapter 14
Endurance Training

Endurance is the ability to withstand fatigue. It is developed only

when an athlete is thoroughly fatigued. One must stop doing endurance
training when form breaks. To build great endurance, one must work with
different intensities and different times as well as rest intervals. The im-
portant thing for athletes to know is that developing endurance raises their
strength and oxidation qualities.
Westside uses a non motorized treadmill to build muscular endur-
ance. Endurance is built with one long set on the treadmill or it can be done
in intervals. One can walk for the length of time of their sport-event. Or you
can do intervals for a long distance race. Here’s an example: if a race is 20
minutes long, the athlete can start with four, five-minute workouts with a set
rest interval. Then, to increase endurance, shorten the rest intervals until four
intervals are now two intervals.
When training seven to 10-year-old children, consider many short
runs from 40 to 60 meters for up to 15 trips while constantly shortening the
rest intervals. For example, start with 60-second rest intervals, and then go to
50-second rest intervals, then 40 seconds, and so on. Go slow at first so the
child can recover and perform the task correctly.
For workouts, do the following:

• Sled pull

• Wheel barrow

• Carry medicine ball

• Sand bag on back

• Carry Kettlebells

61
 • Walk with weight vest

• Bear crawl

• Run backward.
These are just a few examples.
For upper body endurance, do simple tasks.

• Hook rope to sled and pull hand over hand

• Carry Kettlebells

• Carry medicine balls of 10, 15 or 20 pounds

• Walk with band bar with light weight

• Pull sled with upper body by using a second strap

• Swim or walk in pool with water up to your waist

• Do push-up and assisted pull-ups by placing your feet in a rubber band

attached to top of rack.
This is the lightened method: ride stationary bike or walk on treadmill.
It takes great endurance to perform prolonged sport activities. The
above methods are for general endurance. This leads to directed endurance
that leads to a transition period for sport-specific activities. You must develop
both cardiovascular and muscular endurance evenly. One sees many athletes
with great cardio, but little muscular endurance in sports requiring arm en-
durance such as boxing.
When one exercises, one must also recover. Every athlete needs to
learn to relax, meaning both the mind and the muscles. This is a skill that
must be taught by the coach. The ability to recover will teach the child to
correctly carry out technical skills. Remember, one has to build endurance
for long races, but also to maintain top speed for the maintenance phase of
races. One has to build endurance for other sports events as well whether it
is hand speed for throwing punches or swinging a racket. Both lower body
endurance for the legs and arms are required for many sports.
All sports call for somewhat different forms of endurance. To build
endurance with light activity, heavy resistance must be employed. In the NLF

62
there is a test with 225 pounds in the bench press for a number of repeti-
tions. Just think if a player can only bench 250 pounds for one rep. He would
be limited with just 25 pounds under their top weight. But, if a second player
could bench 450 pounds, then 225 pounds would be easy to do several reps.
This example is why having a high level of maximal strength leads to greater
endurance. Both have to do with body type and genetics. Sports like soccer
rely more on great endurance, not great strength while on the field. Great
muscle strength can be built by doing reps with 75 to 80 percent of a one rep
max.
In conclusion, all special strength must be increased to improve en-
durance. It is important to know that great physical change from endurance
training then explosive strength training requires more time for recovery.
This is the reason that other methods of strength training must play a role in
endurance—the recovery rate of other special strength is much shorter. To
close, remember both muscular endurance and cardiovascular fitness must be
improved simultaneously.

63
 Chapter 15
Testing a Child

Can a child compete with others?

A physical test can not only determine the child’s physical ability, but
also their composure.
Are they prey or predator? If they can’t complete a cone drill correctly, then
there would be little chance of running a route for football or basketball.
Some basic tests would include the following types of activities:

• Running a 10, 20 or 30-yard race

• Doing a running and standing long jump

• Performing vertical jumps

• Counting number of standing push-ups

• Counting number of pull-ups

• Jumping rope and counting jumps for one minute or jumping for as
long as possible

• Swimming a lap or laps for time

• Sitting in a half squat in a stationery position for time

• Holding arms to the sides or in front in a stationery position for time

• Sit and reach to test for flexibility

• Throw a one, two and three kg medicine ball and measure distance

Other tests to gauge strength, endurance, coordination, and flexibility are

these:

65
 • Games

• Badminton

• Table tennis

• Miniature golf

• Handball

• Throwing baseball for distance

• Throwing football for distance

• Kicking a football for distance

• Dribbling a basketball for time

Partner drills are another assessment tool. Here are two examples to
help you consider what other types of activities would work for your child:
throwing and catching and catching ground balls. Along with these observa-
tions, consider how the child responds to a drill. Can they do the drill? Can
they improve their time? If not, are they determined to improve, or quit?
Does he or she get frustrated or take things in stride?
These are some of the keys to evaluate a child from seven to 10 years
old. Choosing a sport the child can excel at can be a very difficult task. But
hopefully, these suggestions will help guide a short or long-term sporting
career.
Parents are always planning their child’s education, but seldom pro-
vide a path for athletic excellence. This manual is merely a guide for parents
and coaches on selecting a sport or sports best suited for a child. For more
in-depth information an excellent book to read is Children and Sports Training:
How your Future Champions Should Exercise to Be Healthy, Fit and Happy by Dr.
Jozef Drabik (1996). Drabik analyzes all aspects of developing young chil-
dren from four to 10 years old. The book covers many workouts and why
boys and girls do not use the same exercises.

What comes after the Rule of Three?

I believe what comes after the Rule of Three is The Rule of 10 Years. This
theory came to me about 20 years ago. To be truly successful, I believe it requires 10

66
years of training or 10,000 hours of special training at an athlete’s chosen sport. Not
only young children, but children starting at 11 or 12 years old must strive toward a
single sport. An athlete must excel constantly to advance in his or her sport. Every
two years up until the athlete is 19 to 21 years of age would be referred to as the
polished period. Throughout, the 10 years of training must be enjoyable, never
boring while enhancing his or her sporting ability. Much more can be found about
athletic development in a book by Vladimir Issurin, Ph.D entitled Athletic Talent,
Identification and Its Development (2017).

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 CHAPTER 16
1- SINGLE LEG HIP AND OVER HEAD RAISES

69
 2- BODYWEIGHT JUMPING SQUATS

70
3- BODYWEIGHT REGULAR SQUATS

71
 4- JUMP ROPE

72
5- WEIGHTED JUMPING SQUATS

73
 6- FRONT RAISES

74
7- MEDBALL SQUAT AND THROW

75
 8- ANGLED HIGH KNEES

76
9- SIDE RAISES

77
 10- SIDE STRETCHES

78
11- POWER JOG

79
 12- LUNGE

80
13- PRESS UP

81
 14- SINGLE LEG GLUTE RAISE

82
15- MED BLL SIT UP

83
 16- SINGLE ARM PUSH UP ROW

84
17- PUSH UP TO PLANK

85
 18- ABDOMINAL V SIT

86
19- MODIFIED PUSH UP

87
 20- SINGLE TUCK JUMPS

88
89
 Side steps

90
91
 Over headpress

92
Pull through

93
 Back Row

94
Peck Deck Action

95
96
97
References and Selected Bibliography

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Black, J. E., K. R. Isaacs, B. J. Anderson, A. A. Alcantara, and W. T. Greenough.

1990. Learning causes synaptogenesis, whereas motor activity causes angio-
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Bondarchuk, Anatoliy. 2015. Champion School: A Model for Developing Elite Athletes.
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Brunner, Rick, and Ben Tabachnik. Soviet Training and Recovery Methods. 1990. Pleasant
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Drabik, Jozef. 1996. Children and Sports Training: How your Future Champions Should
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“Famous NFL Fathers and Sons | FOX Sports.” n.d. Accessed February 13, 2018.
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Kraaijenhof, Henk. 2016. Speed Is What We Need. Edited by Bryan Mann, Ph.D. First
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Issurin, Vladimir, Ph.D. First edition, 2017. Athletic Talent, Identification and Its Develop-
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 Issurin, Vladimir, Ph.D. 2015. Building the Modern Athlete. Muskegon Heights, MI:
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Janovitz, Scott. n.d. “The Most Successful Father-Son Combos in Sports History.”
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Siff, Mel C. Sixth Edition, 2003. Supertraining. Denver: Supertraining Institute.

Stupnicki, Romuald, Editor. 1991. Biology of Sport, Vol. VIII, (Reference to Wazny
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Viru, Atko. 1994. Adaptation in Sports Training. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.

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Wells, Katharine F. and Evelyn K. Dillon. 1952. The Sit and Reach—A Test of Back
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Yessis, Michael, and Richard Trubo. 1988. Secrets of Soviet Sports Fitness and Training.
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